A Climate of Hope

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Just thought I would highlight the End Fossil Fuel Subsidies campaign I've been working on (the intern's baby, so to speak). It's been very rewarding to see constituents become involved with their legislators and be able to record their interactions in a meaningful way on our website. After sifting through 1600 reports of calls, emails, and social media posts made by citizens, we've put 77 Members of Congress on the record with concrete evidence. 350 will be able to support and target legislators with the information we interns helped put together, something I am quite proud of. Clarity between environmental policy and the public is so important and lacking at this point in time.

In a more short-term project, I wrote a shout-out to the folks of Kivalina, Alaska (who are fighting to avoid 'climate refugee' status) for the 350 blog on our homepage. It's the most recent post on 350.org (or find the entire post here).

More reflection to come, but for now I want to thank everyone at 350 for this amazing experience. I admire and envy all that you do - please keep up the hope and fight!

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

In addition to updating and maintaining the endfossilfuelsubsidies.org scoreboard of where congress stands, I've been asked to help research the media coverage of our Twitterstorm to tell legislators in Rio+20 that we need to end subsidies now. Though it seems unlikely we've surpassed Justin Bieber's record for the most tweets in 24 hours, we are pleased with the amount of participation in the event from concerned citizens. I think the most exciting part of the project was projecting tweets in major cities like London, Sydney, and New York. Hard not to be inspired by pictures like this one, taken by Stephen Brown for 350.org.

I also wanted to share this this interview I came across by Daniel from our office for RT news about the importance of ending fossil fuel subsidies:

Monday, June 11, 2012

At 350 we've been calling all of our members in Ohio to encourage them to go to the Don't Frack Ohio protest we're hosting on June 17. And how cool is it that we're holding organizing training sessions for three whole days before the event! I just wish people would take advantage of the opportunity... and that I could go. I have a new found respect for phone banking - it's necessary and not easy. Maybe because I'm getting better at it.

Last Thursday we also started helping out on the End Fossil Fuel Subsidies project. 350 encouraged citizens to call their senators and representatives and ask them where they stand on our end to subsidies bill. The intern team (yes, we're a team now) was to go through all of the reports of phone call we received and determine which legislators supported and opposed our bill, and to highlight the 'interesting' responses we received. Getting climate laws into writing is so important - I'm glad we could help out! And I love that this experiment gets real citizens involved in their districts.

One last thing. According to New Scientist, carbon dioxide concentrations averaged over 400 ppm throughout the month of April... This is huge news. It's finally here! And with the carbon dioxide curve still rising at exponential rates, the future doesn't look too good. How will we ever get back DOWN to 350? What's the most effective thing we can do now to get us in the right direction?

Thursday, May 31, 2012

One of the pictures 350 received on Climate Impacts Day was from the Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage (
http://www.dancingrabbit.org/ ). Browsing the website got the ball rolling on what it means to live sustainably. I settled on a question that I intend to consider further: what can I do with my life that will make my efforts the most productive in improving lives and protecting the planet? If I don't get to be a grassroots organizer right away, what's the next best option? What should people do who don't have the means to be an activist but still want to support the cause? I need to invest a few classes towards an alternative I would still be proud of.

As I'm going through all of the US events, I'm going to post event ideas that were especially inspirational.

People in Ojai, California gathered to teach citizens about Urban Homestead. I'm not sure if they retrofitted their homes, but I know caulking windows and instilling energy-efficient habits can be done. Really glad I found this! Here's the link: http://urbanhomestead.org/

Oops - forgot to post yesterday. All I did was prepare and send out thank-yous to the US Climate Impacts Day organizers. Now I'm working on a summary of all the US events.

Anna asked me to note the kinds of information I couldn't find about 350 when I was writing a paper about it this spring. Meaning, the types of information a website should have for interested college students. For one, a summary of past events (with participation numbers and statistics) could increase transparency between the organization and curious individuals. I mentioned the idea of including articles about 350 on its website, either in the form of summarizing posts or a list at the bottom of a given campaign's page. I'm very interested in 350's ideal approach to sustainable life on a personal level, and bet there are others looking for 'green guides' from 350 who have also come up short. Organizers may understand that rallying people is important, but do they realize that eating locally-grown, un-processed food and planting a native garden can have an impact, too?